The smoke alarms were a lifesaver for Linda Hays.
The piercing noise roused the great-grandmother from her bed early Monday morning. She looked down and saw flames leaping at an old wooden chest.
Police say a stranger -- an arsonist -- is to blame.
"How could you? How could you do something like this? Have you no conscience?" asked Hays. "You almost killed three people in this house. If it hadn't have been for fire alarms, we'd be gone."
Hays grabbed another relative and her 7-year old great-granddaughter and ran from the burning home. All three made it out alive, along with their two dogs and two cats, but the blaze claimed nearly all of what they own.
"I'm mad. I'm very, very angry," Hays said. "How could he do that to people who've worked all their life?"
Monday's blaze is one of 11 suspicious fires set in Auburn since early October, said Commander Steve Stocker with the Auburn Police Department. No one has been injured but the damage has been significant.
"We believe that all the fires at this point are suspicious and we believe that we have somebody that is intentionally setting these fires," Stocker said.
Detectives say most of the fires were set between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. They appear to be random.